


The Promise

by eehw



Category: Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dark Fantasy, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Recovery, Tags May Change, because i don't want to spoil, eventually, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:54:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29143317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eehw/pseuds/eehw
Summary: Night-fires burn on dark shores. Bandits fray the roads of Araluen. In the south of the realm, rumours in markets and taverns speak of Wargals stirring in the Mountains of Rain and Night. The Ranger Corps, while reformed, is being tested to its very limits. The Couriers work tirelessly to investigate with the borderlords of Celtica, fearing the worst.Could Morgarath be returning?Our story has many players. A failed battleschool student in a stable, his dreams of knighthood crushed along with his hand. An apprentice courier forced into the front lines far too young. A young Ranger, worrying for his former master who hasn't talked to him in years. A boy lighting fires at night on a beach, a moondarker with no name to call his own. And last, the Ranger Halt - a lonely and grim man, bent under the weight of the role he carries in bolstering the realm, and a broken promise from 15 years prior.Whatever it is, one thing is certain. This is not the world we think we know.A simple AU investigating the question: What if Halt never brought Will home after Hackham Heath? - and all the fallout along with it.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 16





	1. The Ghosts We Still Remember

**Author's Note:**

> Extensive AU. My first fanfic for RA, and on Ao3 for that matter.
> 
> I'm going to be covering a lot of various topics. This is a definite angst fic, and I've taken quite a few liberties with Flannagan's world. Going to do a blanket tw for most of this - there will be death, mourning, drugs, religious affairs, violence, among other things at various points throughout this narrative, as it is fitting for the world I'm going to create. No sex, because I can't write it. But a lot of happiness too! Later on! I'm probably just paranoid, but I never know where my writing takes me, so I'll leave it at that for now. 
> 
> Sidenote - I am not John! I'm mutilating the world he made instead!

* * *

Halt’s steady eyes stay fixed on the horizon, legs tight on Abelard’s saddle. The shaggy horse - the _Ranger horse_ , resilient as ever - has carried him this far, but at last she’s starting to tire. It doesn’t matter, though. He’s arrived. Only slow trotting is needed now.

Before him in the late afternoon haze, the road runs steadily down into a wide valley, lacing through farmland lined with coppices and pollarded trees. Faint blabbering is just barely heard over the cold breeze - the people are out in the fields, it seems, rolling up bales for harvest, cutting the meadows and the corn. Back in Redmont, they’d be having Harvest-Day soon. 

A part of Halt misses his Fief. It’s been a long month. He’s tired, yes - but this is more important.

Beyond it all, tall and proud, the faint tan curtain-walls and stocky towers of Aspienne Fief loom from its low perch amidst the wider land. A sedge-choked stream, not unlike Redmont’s, winds lazily below it, golden-brown from the sun.

This is a sight the grizzled Ranger hasn’t seen in years - duties to the realm, duties in reforming the corps, duties to _everyone_ have prevented him from coming. That’s what he tells himself. That’s what helps him sleep at night.

His heart clenches in his chest. That’s not right - his heart’s not supposed to feel anything, hasn’t felt anything since his last apprentice fledged off. _Gilan_. Halt’s not talked to him in a long while now, except at gatherings - the very gathering he’s currently failing to turn up to.

Halt urges Abelard forward once more, faint clip-clopping of hooves only audible to the most trained of listeners. Even as he arrives in the old town, its pitch roofs leaning in around him, he doesn’t bother to look for the notice board, go to the keep, visit the newly-fledged Ranger that he knows has recently been stationed there from Crowley’s letters. He turns right, off into the country once more.

_*His name’s- his name’s... P-p-promise... m-*_

For a moment, there’s something behind the Ranger’s eyes. Fire in the night, a mother’s begging, a broken pair of dice. Old memories, old stories lost to flame. Grimacing, he draws himself up. There’s no time for that. Not yet.

It’s true he’s only here on duty. But it’s not to the king, nor the realm, nor the Corps. It’s to a dead man. A dead man, and a promise that should never have been broken.

* * *

By the time he and Abelard reach the banked lane’s end, the shadows in the grass are long and the air cold from windchill. Before him, a low gate in the hedge frowns, overgrown and evidently little-used even by farmhands. Two elms flank it, large and bloated. 

In another time, they’d just been trimmed and freshly cut. The gate had been yellow then - not the rotting brown he sees before him now, all mossy and grey. 

“Come on, Abelard,” he mutters, nudging his horse gently in that secret way he knows she understands. A swift kick of her leg, and the rotting gate swings open with a creak. Abelard’s about to trot through, when suddenly… she stops. 

He looks at her quizzically, but she has none of it.

_Look_ , she seems to say in the way only Ranger horses know, whinnying softly. On the ground, the old gate-lock lies - the sign of Norgate Fief still writ on its back, even after years of rust. Even the land remembers his promise, for what good it made.

The faintest rustle of leaves. Everything’s quiet but for the night-calls of birds, but Halt knows. Someone’s here.

“Come out, Ranger,” he growls out. He’d been hoping no one else would be following him, but Lady Luck hadn’t been on his side for a long while. 

“And here I thought there was a Gathering,” a dry voice drawls out, the lazy tongue of east-Araluan coming out strong. Halt’s gotten better at picking out accents in the near-decade he’s been here. He had to learn quick for the war, after all.

“Why are you here, then?” Halt can’t keep the annoyance from showing through. The other man melts from the shadows, hood thrown back to reveal a young face with wispy red hair, a leather patch covering his left eye. Ranger Sam, Halt remembers. 

“Your voice. Hibernian. Ranger… Ranger Halt?” A look of awe crosses the Ranger’s face.

Halt only grunts. He doesn’t have time for this. The redhead shakes himself out of his brief stupor, as if he’s just noticed the older man’s glare.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, hands raised. “No harm meant. There was an accident with some roadsmen, a week or two ago. Bad one. Can’t ride long-distance right now, though I damn well wish I could - Old Nells would kill me if I even tried.”

This man’s too talkative. _God_ , he doesn’t need this right now.

“Didn’t stop you from crawling along after me here though, did it?” Halt’s tone of voice is more biting than he intends, but if Sam notices, it doesn’t faze him.

“Was bored.”

Halt raises an eyebrow, a scowl knit tight on his face.

“Saw you riding into town. My horse Yyfda is tied behind a tree further back. It’s not often things happen in Aspienne, you know. Not until recently at any rate.” He scratches the back of his neck. Something darker crosses the young man’s face. “But that’s all of Araluen. Bandits getting bolder. Moondarkers light their fires again on the coasts, you know, even after we pushed them out of their holes south of Seacliff last year. Rumours saying they’re in Celtica now, but I’m sure you know all that, being _the_ Ranger Halt everyone talks about, after all.”

The elms about them creak. Someone young is singing out in the fields - likely a peasant-boy, picking firewood for their stores after fall-cutting. The winter would likely be harsh this year, and the smaller folk will need all they can manage before the cold sets in from the north.

“Name’s Sam, by the way.”

“I know.”

Wind blows, golden leaves drifting off bending boughs. Halt spurs Abelard forward. 

“What, you aren’t even going see me off? Too big for the likes of me, are you? The great Halt, the-”

Halt lashes out a fierce gaze, the young Ranger’s voice suddenly dying. Their eyes lock. He stiffens for a moment. The other man’s tone of voice reminds him of Gilan when he was younger so, so much. Green, young, sure of himself. This Sam’s likely not seen anything of war, of famine, of struggle. 

Of loss.

“Not now. I have to go.”

“Over there?” He looks out beyond the gate, eyes squinting. "All the people ‘ere say it’s haunted, you know. Not that it is, of course, but you know how they are. Farmland’s been requisitioned since, but they can never quite build on that land. Something always goes wrong.”

“I haven’t much care for ghosts.” _Liar_. “I have to go.”

“Wait.”

For a moment, all the world stills.

“I-I don’t know you. I mean, everyone in the Corps’s heard of what you’ve done. You’re a legend, and-and…” he’s stammering, trying to find the words. Not like Gilan, then. “But I don’t know _you_. Whatever it is. In your voice. It’s- it’s not your fault.”

His eyes are bright, his voice warm and full of understanding. Halt knows in his heart that his prior judgement had been wrong. This man does know loss, no matter how young he is. Half-thoughts spin around unbidden in the older Ranger’s mind.

Was it the war that did it? The man he apprenticed to? Wherever he’d lived before? Bandits? Crooks? Thieves? His own doing? 

_Is he an orphan?_

No. He’s not the right age. Too old. _Idiot._

Halt says nothing as he rides on, says nothing as he ambles down the path, the one that used to be so bright, so happy. When he turns back at last, the gate and the man standing in it are nothing but a speck in the eventide, the Ranger’s cloak obscuring him in shadow. Halt knows he’s still there, still watching. He’s out of earshot.

Memories, memories in the cold air. Daniel’s voice screaming amid wolf snarls. A saviour’s body lying alone on a field of bloody grass, dead Wargals sprawled out around him as if a scene from one of Castle Araluen’s famed tapestries. Halt hates that he can’t even remember the man’s face. It’s been far, far too long.

_Protect him. For me._

“If only you knew.”

* * *

  
  


There’s not much left of the house when he sees it now. Burned wood, an old hearthplace. Wild plants have since taken it - sweet willowherb, nettles, ashy weeds - but Halt knows it like it was yesterday. 

This is where it happened. 

The two gamblers had come up the lane like wolves in the dark. They’d gone inside. Halt barely remembers it - the fighting. There was so much noise that night. Frantic screaming - a mother’s screams. They’d knifed her. And then, a rogue flame, from the hearth in the middle of the house. Everything was burning, burning away, and he’d been so focused on fighting Jerrel, he hadn’t kept track of the other. But then the walls collapsed in. He’d barely gotten out. 

The boy’s mother, Daniel’s wife, she’d saved him. She’d killed Jerrel. 

The other one, Kord, he’d stabbed earlier. It wasn’t deep, but Halt knew blood loss. When everything caught alight, it was hard to keep track of things.

_Where did the child go?_

Halt draws out of his saddlepack something he’s held onto for years. It’s a poppet, one he remembers the babe holding onto, tight fat fingers clenching it like a lifeline before the flames set in. The one in his hands now is charred, missing eyes and the little chain that’d once been strapped to its neck, paint having long-since peeled away is long gone - but he’s kept it regardless, even after all these years. He’d found it in the ruins after the flames subsided. It’d rained the next day.

Halt crosses the threshold of the burned homestead, moving away the dead brush. They’re there. They have to be there, they have to-

Even his grizzled countenance can’t keep the sigh of relief from escaping his lips.

Two stones, ones he piled nearly fifteen years ago, still stand. The charred bones were indistinguishable in the fire, but he’d set them all here.He’d wanted a knight’s funeral, but the clergy was away with the baron at the time. 

They deserved a grave. It’s not right to leave them to rot. Even though they’d known no one here, coming down from Norgate, they deserved a grave. Halt had tried to go north, after the war. To see if anyone cared.

No one did. There was no other family.

He did it his own way, in the end. The rites of the old heroes of Clonmel, dedicated to the Sidhe of old. It’d felt fitting. _Right._

He kneels, hands tracing the doll one final time. The flowers he’d scattered on that day are long since decomposed, trodden away by time. He sets the poppet down, his hands shaky as he finally lets his tears fall, fat and blobby. He’s a grown man. He shouldn’t do this, not for a family or a child he barely knew. He shouldn’t-

But he does. 

Both Daniel and his wife had laid their lives down for him, in one way or another. He’d had but one promise to fulfill, and he failed them both.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

His voice is hoarse, ugly. For a moment, Halt hears nothing, his grief blocking out the noise. He hasn’t let himself go like this in years. He stares hard at the graves before him, stones pilfered from the hearth. A part of him hopes for forgiveness, absolution - some strange kind of closure. The people of the town said there were ghosts here, did they not? Restless ghosts like in hedge-tales.

“Will,” he croaks out, tasting the name on salty lips. That was what Daniel called the boy, wasn’t it. _Will_. A champion’s name, a name of old warriors, great heroes. “I’m-”

The words taste ashy in his mouth. He doesn’t even know the family’s last name. He’d asked, back at Norgate, but - nothing. There was no extended family. No one to care.

For all the heroism the mere footsoldier Daniel had shown, he would remain just that - a footsoldier. A nameless face, actions privy to none but the quiet nightmares of an aging Ranger, and a list in a dusty library of names holed up in Castle Araluen, dark and untouched for years.

At least the land remembers.

_He should be here._

Halt stands up slowly, drying his eyes with one swipe of his sleeve. This is foolish - he should know better. Hibernian he may have been in another life, but he’s no man for superstitions or stories. He hasn’t been in a long, long time. Ghosts can’t talk, after all.

Ghosts never talk.

  
  


* * *


	2. The Stuff of Stories I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Horace gets hurt. Then he meets a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not Flanagan. 
> 
> And so the plot begins. 
> 
> Check the tags - and everything mentioned in the notes from the first chapter. Some stuff to be aware of before going into this one. 
> 
> tw internalised ableism, bullying

The crows circle above him. Horace has never been one to curse, but he does now. His salt-stained cheeks, grimy and tired from the day’s earlier events, feel cold in the evening breeze.

He’s been strapped up here all day. He can’t get himself free - no, Jerome was tight with his knots, and Alda and Bryn had strapped his feet unfortunately well with all the skill they’d learned in Battleschool. He couldn’t see well, either. The mockery of a visor they’d stuffed on his face, a stolen helm from Rodney’s armoury specifically to ‘teach Baby a lesson’, made sure of that.

It’s suffocating, really. But he deserves it; that’s what he tells himself. He deserves everything. Battleschool is meant to be difficult, after all. All the other cadets said nothing. He was the strange boy from the Ward, too big for his own good. He deserved what Jerome, Bryn, and Alda had given him. He hadn’t kept up with his training, so it was only natural that Sir Rodney would flunk him out, right?

That doesn’t make the pain any less real. He cried the entire evening after that, collecting his things. Jerome, Alda, Bryn - they’d given him a black eye as a parting gift. Something to say ‘stay away, baby.’ ‘Give up.’ They were right, of course they were right. He was a shitty cadet, and likely would have made for a shitty knight, too.

Sir Rodney at the time hadn’t seemed to understand why Horace had been failing. That meant it was normal, right? He just hadn't made the cut.

Horace refuses to look at his right arm. That was the easiest for the trio to strap against the tree. That was their first target. Though it’s been just three months since the incident, and _it’s healed_ , the stump’s still sensitive. Horace couldn’t stop the tears from escaping when they prodded it, old wounds rubbed raw and red in the afternoon light. 

Bryn laughed when Horace screamed, pushing him to the earth. Alda stood over him, ugly face leering. _I’m a knight,_ Horace repeated over and over in his mind. _I’m a knight, and knights don’t cry._

_Don’t they?_

‘You’ll never be a knight, baby,’ Jerome said, kicking at his ribs. ‘Who’s even heard of a knight without a hand?’

They kept poking _it_. Horace screamed and screamed, but they clenched his mouth. No one would come for him. No one would hear.

‘Baby did this to himself,’ one of them said with smiling eyes. They weren’t people anymore - they were monsters. Goblins. The Wargals he’s heard about as a child. ‘Baby got his hand mauled, and made Battleschool look bad for it.’

Horace wanted to deny it. Wanted to say that no, it wasn’t meant to be that way, it was _never meant_ to be that way. But in a way… they were right.

What had compelled him to join the hunt illegally? What had compelled him to go out and…

The stump where his hand should be aches, aches more than anything.

Pride. It was pride. The foolish hope that maybe if they could see how good he really was, how he was worth keeping, even if he couldn’t stand up for himself, even if he was just a baby, even if he was an orphan. That this was what he was meant to do, meant to _be_.

He couldn’t stay at the ward, either. He felt useless there. And going into the town… Jerome, Bryn, and Alda still stalked around there in between training. Him not being a cadet anymore hadn’t stopped their torments, only worsened them.

Alright, so it had been more than just pride. 

But he’s paid the price now, right? The three cadets would come back. He’s been up in the tree they’d lashed him to for hours. They’d come back to get him. Then they’d stop. He’s done his penance. They _have to come back._ They stole his prosthetic, after all. He needs that.

Isn’t it ever enough?

The crow caws on his shoulder once more, his vision blurring. His throat’s parched. _Need water. Need…_

The last thing he sees before darkness takes him is a lone, small, shadowy figure, watching him with careful eyes. A voice he doesn’t know. Frail hands, _old hands_ , touch his raw flesh. Someone’s… holding him?

“H… hel… p,” he croaks out. Is he speaking? Did the figure hear him?

Did they?

It’s not enough. It’s not enough. One final breath. Then-

Then everything turns black.

* * *

The first thing he hears when he wakes up is rain.

Warm. Everything’s _so warm_. It’s suffocating.

He starts, moving to throw off whatever strange thing is oppressing his skin, but pain shoots through his limbs. A staggered yell escapes his lips, barely stifled.

“Well, the gods never said children were wise.”

It’s a woman’s voice, tinged with the faintest lilt of foreigners’ tongue. Horace turns his head slowly to the right of his… his cot. He’s in a small cot, low and dusty. The house around him is narrow, stone-built. There’s a small fire burning in the hearth nearby, with a cloaked woman crushing herbs over a crockpot.

She’s watching him. Her eyes are brilliant green.

“Y-you…” his voice is choppy, cracked. He knows her. “You’re… Mother Froglegs. The w-witch.”

His hands fist thready covers. For a moment, he can feel his right hand there - strong and whole like before. Like he can almost touch… 

Pain.

_Oh. Right._

Stillness. Rainfall. Then she laughs, bright and sad.

“Is that what you children call me?” She clicks her tongue. “Only been here half a year. Didn’t know I’d grown a reputation as a _witch_ of all things.”

Horace says nothing. She’s standing over him now, a warm wet cloth pressing into his forehead. The air smells of herbs. A sigh, quiet muttering in another tongue.

“Suppose I’ve grown a reputation for too much in my life. Curse these old bones.”

Horace sits up, far more carefully this time. Everything aches. For a moment, his memories swirl. Where had he been before… 

Jerome’s face.

_Oh._

He gasps, swinging his legs to the side of the bed. God, everything hurts.

“Don’t move too quickly,” she says, voice more commanding than anything else.

Horace has had enough of commands. He’s so damn tired.

“I’ll do what I want, I-” 

“Everyone says they’ll do what they want, but few people are actually doing what they want. Tell me, child,” she pauses. Horace scowls. He’s not a child. He might not be a… a cadet, anymore. But he’s not a child. “Do you _want_ to hurt yourself?”

She turns away, tending to the fire more. The rain sounds outside the cottage are deafening. Thunder.

“Of course n-” Horace begins, but stops himself. _Did he?_ He switches the topic. “Where is this?”

“Where I’ve been the past year. An old traveller’s cottage. Remnant of the old brewer kings’ lands. You’re using my bed-bench, I hope you don’t mind.”

“E-explains the old woman smell.”

He flinches, expecting her to yell at him. He should know how to hold his tongue better around adults. He’s been in Battleschool, and-

She only laughs.

“A sense of humour. Good.”

“Why are you…” Horace searches for the words on his tongue. Why is she helping him? Just a few months ago, he’d barely paid her heed. She had always sat there by the road, begging for coins, offering cures and poultices. He’d scorned her, like all the other cadets and children in the town. 

Strange women with strange tongues aren’t to be trusted, one of the older cadets had said, eyes glowering at the witch. 

“Helping you?” Her eyes fall onto the stump on his arm. Rather than disgust, they’re filled with a softness, one he hasn’t known in a long time. “An herbalist helps the sick, does she not? And gods know, you were sicker than anything.”

Horace furrows his brow. That doesn’t answer anything.

“Stop pitying me,” he announces at last. 

She’s already gone.

A blustery wind blows through the cracks in the walls of the stone cottage, sending Horace shivering beneath the thready blankets. He’s half asleep when she comes back, the rain a mere drizzle in the evening air. Sad eyes watch him, but tiredness reigns in his bones. Horace is done with the world, and a part of him thinks the world might be done with him, too.

Before his eyes shut for the night, he lifts his head. Something else drifts in the air, something beyond the faint pitter-patter of raindrops, beyond hearth-flames crackling. He could swear he hears singing.

* * *

It’s easier to move the next day. The memories of the past few months still reign in his dreams, but they’re less loud when he’s awake. Maybe, in time, he might even forget their faces.

A fool’s hope. She still doesn’t let him out.

“Don’t give yourself to ghosts, child,” she says as she leans down over him, locking the door to go outside. _Damn the world_. “The rain will take your soul if you leave so early.”

“That’s just a story. It’s not real.”

“Are we not all the stuff of stories? Besides. I do not want you dead on my watch, and you aren’t fully healed yet.”

Wind batters the door outside. She hums, gathering her things into a small pack on the other side of the room.

Silence.

* * *

Horace is bored. 

He’d been bored for months already before this, waiting for his arm to heal. Back when he’d only just flunked out, he’d felt indignation. Now, though… 

He sighs, eyes faded and sullen. Being stuck in cold rooms is something he’s used to.

“What’s that for,” he idly asks the woman, who’s fiddling with her pack once more. She’s gone outside several times, collecting things. Failed battleschool student or not, a man according to his own society or not, he’s still young. He has _questions_. For a moment, she peers at him, the faintest of smile-lines gracing the corners of her tired eyes.

“When the rains stop, I’m leaving Redmont,” she whispers. Her eyes are starry, far-away. “Selsey to the west is where my sights lie.”

Horace’s eyes bug out.

“L-leaving? But you’ve…”

She’s been here for a while. He’d not really cared much about the dealings of the people of the village since Battleschool started kicking up, but she’d still become something of a fixture. Why throw that away?

“I always leave,” she says, as if she could hear his very thoughts. “I come, and I go. A wanderer, I am.”

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

“Isn’t that lonely? Don’t you have...”

People. Maybe not family - God knows, he hasn’t had that really - but someone. Someone who cares.

Everyone seems to have that but him. To his surprise, she laughs bitterly.

“I’m from Celtica. My family was killed in a mining accident long ago, or that’s what they told me. They’d been working seasonal.”

Whatever words Horace is about to say turn to mud in his mouth.

“I’m- I... I’m sorry,” he says at last. He doesn’t really know what else to tell her.

“I couldn’t stand living in their house any longer, so I left. It’s nicer on the road. In Araluen.” She leans back into her old chair by the fire, wood creaking under her. 

“Why?”

“Why is it nicer?”

“Yes. People judge you here, don’t they? They mock you.”

He’d judged her, after all. Hell, people judged _him_ for flunking out of Battleschool. Judgement that soon turned to something he hated more than anything else after the hunt happened.

If only it could end.

“Oh, of course they do. People fear what they don’t know, do they not? A foreign woman, with foreign gods, a strange voice,” she trails off. “But I pay my lot in life here. People do not know my past. They don’t look at me with _pity_.”

Horace’s cheeks flush, though he doesn’t know why. Something in her words seems accusatory. They sit there once more, silent in the dark room. She hums.

“Do you want to know the real reason I saved you?”

Horace says nothing, eyes trained on the shoddy thatch roof above them, braced with grey beams. The wind is blowing hard against it.

“I saved you because I saw my son’s eyes in your own. He was still alive, when they brought him back into the village. Still alive, and I couldn’t save him.”

Her voice is wavering now. Wavering but strong.

“It seems the gods gave me you. A second chance.”

“I was barely dead,” he says, as if the words meant something.

“You were barely alive, either.”

Horace shivers. His stump is itching terribly from where the cadets had prodded it. Before he can protest, she’s already by his side, massaging it gently in warm water.

There are no words between them for a time. He’s the first to break their silence.

  
“Aren’t you going to ask me how it happened?”

_Please, no. Please._

Horace won’t talk about that. He can’t - not now. No one’s listened to him before, and it’d just make him sound stupid now, confessing it to some random woman who isn’t even from his own countryland. 

“No.”

He exhales a breath he didn’t know he’s been holding.

“Even the great god Bran had his own ghosts to carry, on his quest for the cup of life,” she says, eyes trained to the ground. “I can’t ask you to do anything. Just know that as with Bran, a man can only hold so much before the weight of the world caves him in.”

It's the first time she's acknowledged the age everyone else expects him to be. Horace sinks into the blankets, trying to force back his tears. No crying. That’s not fair to anyone.

“I-I have this far,” he murmurs, voice muffled through sackcloth. “No one listens to me when I try, anyway.”

She looks like she’s about to say something, but it never leaves her lips. Horace is fine with that. It’s less bothersome that way.

There’s no more noise outside. The rain’s stopped.

“I leave tonight,” she says. “You can come with me to Selsey, if you want. Buy passage out of Araluen, to Hibernia. Start a new life. That’s what I’m doing.”

For a moment, Horace feels hope unbidden rising in his heart. 

“Is it really that easy?”

“No. But it’s an option. If you do not take it - promise me something.”

“I won’t promise anything,” he says, the words tumbling out too fast for his own good. 

“Do it anyway, then." She stares at him, green eyes hard as beryl. "You cannot carry that weight forever, child. Promise me. Promise me you won’t.”

He says nothing.

* * *

She leaves in the night.

He doesn’t follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that the chapter's over I just wanted to say - nothing Horace says or believes here reflects reality. He has been bullied for months, and internalised a lot of terrible, terrible thoughts - about his disability, about Battleschool, about his own bullies. He'll need to figure things out for himself in the future - hopefully he takes her advice.
> 
> Don't know when the next one will come around. I'm writing these as the muse hits me, but we will see some more canon characters pop up as the series grows. Hope you liked the OC. (I made some slight edits regarding the name of a lore bit Halt mentions, but that shouldn't impact the reading of this second chapter). 
> 
> Also, amputees/people knowledgeable about disability - if I got anything wrong please DM me or mention it in the comments. I do want to try and make this accurate as best as I can, and any words help!
> 
> EDIT: Made this a Part 1 of something. I'm not entirely done with Horace's arc here, so what I'll likely be doing are mini arcs with the same shared title for ideas that run longer than 1 chapter but still fall under the umbrella of that story 'segment'. 
> 
> Special thanks to Pokegeek151 on discord for being a great beta, and curiousCalembour for advice with Horace.
> 
> Currently worldbuilding Celtica a tonne for this. Expect a sizeable chapter whenever it comes out.
> 
> Ciao until next time.

**Author's Note:**

> Horace chapter next. Don't expect regular updates. I'm going to try and shoot for each chapter being self contained - no cliffhangers. Hopefully you enjoyed this first one!


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